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>You increasingly need one to remain in compliance with the IRS and so forth Paper tax forms are still available, and tax payments can still be made with check

by eurleif 14y ago

>You increasingly need one to remain in compliance with the IRS and so forth Paper tax forms are still available, and tax payments can still be made with checks. How do you need a computer to stay in compliance with the IRS?

scarmig 14y ago
The external costs of staying in compliance with the IRS without those forms are increasing. In both a relative and an absolute sense: they become more inconvenient and hard to even do, and on top of that there's an expectation you can get taxes done in the same amount of time as someone using a computer. Have this happen a thousand different little ways, and not having a computer becomes effectively impossible.
- zbuc 14y ago
  But this argument based on "freedom" is silly. I am rather sure Ted's argument isn't that it's difficult to pay your taxes. His argument is for "complete freedom" from what he views as technology. Social structures such as taxation are a form of technological innovation. In his view, you wouldn't be enslaved to technology because it's difficult to pay your taxes with a computer instead of paper now(which, coincidentally, is also technology) but that you are enslaved to technology by virtue of being forced into this structure of taxation and the social contract. At least that's the way I see it. It's the only way I can reconcile his philosophy. And it sounds like crap.
  - ktizo 14y ago
    Is not an unreasonable philosophy to get pissed off with the bullshit of modern life and to go and live in the woods for a bit. Lots of people do that at one point or another. The unreasonable, or crazy, or just plain mean, miserable and bitter part is his thinking that he needs to save everyone else from themselves and to then try and do it by sending pipe bombs through the post. Whatever the lucidity of his arguments regarding the dangers of technology, they were all well spelled out in myth thousands of years before and are a foundation of our culture, so he is not a founder of some dangerous new philosphy, but rather is an arrogant murderous slave to one of the oldest ones.

by eurleif 14y ago

scarmig 14y ago

The external costs of staying in compliance with the IRS without those forms are increasing. In both a relative and an absolute sense: they become more inconvenient and hard to even do, and on top of that there's an expectation you can get taxes done in the same amount of time as someone using a computer. Have this happen a thousand different little ways, and not having a computer becomes effectively impossible.

zbuc 14y ago
But this argument based on "freedom" is silly. I am rather sure Ted's argument isn't that it's difficult to pay your taxes. His argument is for "complete freedom" from what he views as technology. Social structures such as taxation are a form of technological innovation. In his view, you wouldn't be enslaved to technology because it's difficult to pay your taxes with a computer instead of paper now(which, coincidentally, is also technology) but that you are enslaved to technology by virtue of being forced into this structure of taxation and the social contract. At least that's the way I see it. It's the only way I can reconcile his philosophy. And it sounds like crap.
- ktizo 14y ago
  Is not an unreasonable philosophy to get pissed off with the bullshit of modern life and to go and live in the woods for a bit. Lots of people do that at one point or another. The unreasonable, or crazy, or just plain mean, miserable and bitter part is his thinking that he needs to save everyone else from themselves and to then try and do it by sending pipe bombs through the post. Whatever the lucidity of his arguments regarding the dangers of technology, they were all well spelled out in myth thousands of years before and are a foundation of our culture, so he is not a founder of some dangerous new philosphy, but rather is an arrogant murderous slave to one of the oldest ones.